Base station antennas are built with arrays of several radiating elements, which are connected to a distribution network (e.g., power dividers, phase shifters, etc.) with transmission lines. Typically, the transmission lines are coaxial cables, and the distribution network are made with strip line devices due to high performances of the strip lines (e.g., good insertion losses, reasonable dimensions, good shielding of the lines, etc.). Specifically, referring to FIG. 1, the radiating elements of base station antennas are connected to the strip lines 112 of the strip line device 110 with coaxial cables 114, wherein the stripe lines 112 are arranged between the cover plate 116 and bottom plate 118 of the strip line device 110.
Several configurations of coaxial cable to strip line interfaces already exist, which mainly comprises two families:
In the first family, the center conductor of the coaxial cable is soldered to the strip line conductor. The braid of the coaxial cable is soldered on an interface part. This interface part is connected to the strip line cover and bottom plates using screws or studs with nuts assemblies. For this family, the potential problems with the interface are:                PIM (Passive Inter Modulation) level variation with screws torque stability;        If there is a problem in the contact with center conductors of the coaxial cable and strip line, the strip line cover must be removed to be able to repair, for example, to check or re-solder the center conductors.        
In the second family, to remove the PIM potential problems due to screws torque variation, the center conductors of the coaxial cable and the strip line are still soldered together, but the coaxial cable braid is also directly soldered to the strip line plates, using special shapes of the plates. In this case, plates are made from material with good soldering capability (e.g., brass, copper, tin plated steel, etc.). For this family, the problems linked to the configuration are:                Difficulties to obtain a good solder with the plates due to heat diffusion across huge area around soldering point;        If there is a problem with the solder of the center conductors, the cover must be removed to repair. As all connection points are soldered, it is even harder to remove the cover than in the first family where it was screwed. Generally, the unsoldered cover has big deformations and must be scrapped and replaced, which is additional cost in labor time and material.        